Eamon Dunn is a poet and essayist from Burlington, Vermont, now based in Chicago, IL. He attended the University of Vermont, where he earned a degree in English and won the Benjamin Wainwright Award for best poem, the Marion Berry Albee Award for excellence in composition, and the Daniel McCarter Award for LGBT studies. His work has been published in The Gist, The Queen's Review, and more.

Natalie Benson-Greer (she/her) is a Chicago based writer with a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. She is currently earning her MA in Social Work at University of Illinois in Chicago with plans to become a therapist. When she's not writing you can find her around the city working as a bartender or crying at Lake Michigan. Her short stories and essays have been published in Hair Trigger Magazine and Awakened Voices. You can find all of her published work and self-published ramblings on her website nataliebensongreer.com

Madeline Blair is a Muslim poet, editor and award-winning filmmaker from Chicago, IL. She is the founder/editor of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ekphrasis Magazine, Orangepeel Magazine, The Collective Magazine and more. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Victor Kamhazi is a Venezuelan rock musician, photographer, and poet based in Chicago, where he plays guitar and synthesizer for Jim The Kid & The Painkillers. His writing captures a world of quiet revelations and intense longing. Victor explores the grit and fleeting moments in urban life in a voice that's both intimate and unfiltered, drawing from his vast musical background to bring a rhythmic intensity and raw honesty to his written work.

John Franklin Dandridge received his MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. His chapbook, Further Down Rd., was published by Fast Geek Press. He has short stories and poems published in Callaloo Journal, Rigorous Journal, New Reader Magazine, Allium, Court Green, Hoxie Gorge Review and Former People. Franklin lives and writes in Chicago.

Speck Osterhout has been an artist since she could hold a crayon. Throughout school she received many awards and accolades for painting, poetry, sculpture, and more. Speck prides herself on being versatile in different mediums. She has been a professional tattooer for over 21 years. Her tattooing career has led her all over the country and world, guest spotting in Germany as well as traveling to Thailand to expand her tattoo knowledge. Speck is also the singer of the NWI band Voidclass. The creative web of Speck Osterhout serves as a type of therapy, allowing her to create unapologetically.

Renee Mudgett (She/They) is a mixed-media artist who utilizes collage, paint, photography and screen printing. As a survivor of domestic violence, Renee’s work is a vivid self portrait, telling the ongoing story of the challenges that arise when leaving abuse. Her abstract work allows for a symbolic representation of the internal struggles: confusion, security, re-experiencing, and identity. The not-fully-rendered imagery depicts isolation while the shapes are attempting to navigate through uncertainty to a new beginning. The simplicity of Renee’s work symbolizes how subtle pain can appear, but the depth that can be felt; through the seeming innocence of the content, but the vastness given by the context.

Caitlin Arquines (She/Her), AKA Cait Arq, is a singer-songwriter and music curator based in Chicago. She’s been writing both songs and poetry since grade school. In middle and high school, she performed at various spoken word events and competed in slam poetry contests around Chicago (i.e. louder than a bomb, slammin’ the sun down). Since then, many of her written poems serve as “seeds” for her songwriting. While both her past and newest original music has been available for listening, these will be her first pieces of poetry to be published. You can find her on Instagram at caitarq.

Spencer Westphalen (He/Him) is an abstract artist based in Chicago. His creative journey is deeply intertwined with his Buddhist practice of chanting Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. This practice is the guiding force behind his work, allowing him to tap into a profound, authentic self-shaped by the mystic law of Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.

Grace Tsichlis earned her MFA from DePaul University and lives in Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys drinking earl grey tea, watching stand-up comedy, and baking.

Stephanie Weber is a Cuban American comedian and writer from Chicago. She has performed all over the city at The Second City, iO, Annoyance, Lincoln Lodge, and Chicago Underground Comedy among many others. Her written work has been published in Reductress, The AV Club, Mental Floss, Slate, and more. She wrote and directed the short film Real Live Girls. In 2024, she got her MFA in dramatic writing from SCAD.

Satori is a poet and author from Rochester, New York who found herself in Chicago after waking up from a three month long nightmare. Satori has considered herself a poet from a very young age, and has been sharing her riddles and rhymes with her community since she was 14, when she first came onto the slam poetry scene in her hometown for the first time. Satori finds inspiration in helping disoriented cicadas back onto trees, watching an elderly couple shop for starches at the farmers market, and painstakingly analyzing every flaw in her family tree. Most importantly, she is thrilled to be here! :)